Cowboys truly need to find a ‘Cowboy Way’

DALLAS – Nothing against Jason Garrett, but his hiring underscores one of the reasons why the Dallas Cowboys have struggled to return to the Super Bowl form they showed in the first half of the 1990s.

Jerry Jones detailed at the start of Thursday’s news conference what he was looking for in a head coach.

“Someone who has tremendous drive and energy,” Jones said, “someone who can communicate effectively with today’s players, someone that commands the respect of the team in the meeting room and in the locker room and on the field, someone who has walked in the same shoes as the players he is going to coach, someone who spends every waking moment thinking of what he’s going to do to make the Dallas Cowboys football team the best it can be.”

Four years ago, after four-years of feeling like he was “walking on egg shells” around Bill Parcells, Jones went with the laid-back Wade Phillips. Now in Garrett, he’s hired the anti-Phillips.

Get the picture?

During Thursday’s news conference, Garrett referred to the “Cowboy Way.” Well, the truth is, there is no “Cowboy Way.”

This isn’t a problem for the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers, two of the league’s top franchise. The Patriots are all about putting team-first, overachieving players around centerpiece quarterback Tom Brady. The Steelers are all about a punishing defense and a strong running game. Neither franchise is afraid of saying goodbye to players seeking lucrative, long-term contracts.

The Cowboys? Every four years or so, they change who they are with the hiring of a new head coach. Parcells emphasized discipline, Phillips didn’t. Garrett is more like Parcells, but it’s likely the next coach won’t be as demanding.

I believe that this franchise won’t be truly successful until it establishes an identity and sticks with it. One problem: That’s unlikely to happen as long as Jones is calling the shots.

But who knows? Maybe he’s changed. After all, he did talk about having a “long-term look” Thursday.

“We are totally aligned in the vision of what we could see in the future with what we might get going here with Jason Garrett as head coach,” said Jones, who has hired seven head coaches in the last 22 years. “So there is a long-term look and you can dream about that longer term look. I know when I first got into the NFL I was naïve and I could dream that maybe 29 more years we could get a coach that we had with Coach (Tom) Landry.

“Those are different times, different days, but you can dream that the thing is in place with Jason because of his age (44) and frankly his experience in growing up in NFL football.”